I’ve promoted many, if not all, of the DB2Night Show episodes that took place in 2010. Scott Hayes, the host of these free webinars has produced a list of the most highly attended shows. All of these shows were recorded, so if you missed one or more, you can catch up.

Thanks Scott for pulling together such a valuable and well attended series of educational webinars!

I work in the Toronto Lab, so I’m very lucky to know all of the listed speakers personally. I’m constantly humbled by the high quality people I get to work with! Sheryl and Klaas I also personally know, but from my association with IDUG instead of IBM.

Early this morning my blog received its 1 millionth view! What a great way to end the year! Thanks to everyone for viewing my blog. I really enjoy writing my blogs and intend to keep writing in the coming year.

DB2 has some great high availability options like HADR and Pure-Scale. But how about the competition? How does DB2 compare to Oracle and SQL Server? In this episode we will look at the architectures that enable high availability and show you why DB2 Pure-Scale is superior to Oracle RAC and SQL Server Cluster.

Special guest Klaas Brant, IBM DB2 GOLD Consultant & Owner KBCE, returns to our show for a second appearance. You might recall Klaas was on our show earlier this year (Episode #18 on 7 May 2010) talking about the Top 10 DB2 LUW mistakes that people make - an Episode that was extremely popular with viewers. Watch the replays on the DB2Night Show website.

If you'd like to learn about DB2 PureScale and competing technologies, then this show is for you! Also, take a look at a previous blog entry I did where I compiled a collection of DB2 Purescale resources: More on DB2 pureScale.

Personal Tidbit: For those keeping score, my blog views are now over 980,000! Lately I’ve been getting nearly 20,000 new views every week, so there is still a chance that I can get to 1M before the end of the year. Thanks for all your support this year!

Join Scott Hayes and special guest Burt Vialpando from IBM tomorrow (Friday June 18) on the DB2Night Show.

Burt will provide a side by side comparison of architectures, terminology, file system layouts, directory structures, administration commands, memory architectures, parameters, storage models and so much more.

If you are a DB2 LUW professional, after this session you will be able to understand your Oracle peers (really, it isn't a foreign language). If you are an Oracle professional, you will discover that the DB2 people aren't so strange after all.

My last post about the DB2Night Show was in error... I said that Mark Wilding was the special guest this week... but it's actually Mike Winer! I'm sure Mark will be rescheduled for a future show.

So, what's Mike Winer going to talk about? I was a recent guest at his new cottage, but I'm sure that topic won't come up! Instead, he's talking about DB2 Locking. Mike was at the IDUG Tampa conference and at last week's CCDB2UG, so if you missed those talks, you'll be able to catch up in this special 90 minute webinar with Scott Hayes.

Mike gave an awesome presentation at IDUG North America in Tampa on DB2 Locking, updates, 9.7 Current Committed, and much more. So that Mike can deliver his full talk on this topic, we are extending the duration of The DB2Night Show to 90 minutes. We should have time for questions from the Studio Audience at the end.

We're going to set aside technical DB2 skills in this episode, and instead we're going to have a nice chat with Sam Lightstone, author of the new book "Making It Big in Software". We're going to try to find out "What does it take to be successful?" Certainly technical skills are part of the equation, but how can one accelerate their career?

In his book, Sam covers these topics and more:

Get your next job in software development

Master the nontechnical skills crucial to your success

Work the organization to move up rapidly

Successfully manage your time, projects, and life

Minimize software project overruns

Successfully manage your time, projects, and life

Avoid killer mistakes that could destroy your career

Move up to "medium-shot", "big-shot", and finally, "visionary"

Launch your own winning software company

You might also be interested to know that Sam Lightstone was a significant contributor "brain" behind the development of the IBM DB2 Design Advisor (db2advis).

Back by popular request, the DB2Night Show is doing another CRUNCHING THE NUMBERS episode wherein a live performance health check will be performed for a real DB2 LUW production database. If you would like to see how this works, watch the replay of Episode #9.

Obviously, to make this show successful and educational for participants, YOUR snapshot data is needed! If you would like a free performance health check analysis completed for your database, please send the text outputs (in a zip file) from these commands to db2nightshow at dbisoftware .com:

* db2 get snapshot for database on DBNAME * db2 get snapshot for bufferpools on DBNAME * db2 get snapshot for tablespaces on DBNAME * db2 get snapshot for tables on DBNAME

As you will see in Episode #9, care will be taken to not reveal the organization that provides the data - your contributions will be anonymous unless you specifically request to be identified.

One studio audience member will be randomly selected to win an Amazon.com gift certificate - use this towards a new USB thumb drive, a new book, or anything you like!

In this episode of The DB2Night Show, special guest Chris Eaton from IBM will
share his TOP 10 Favorite SQL Snapshot commands, host Scott Hayes will throw in
a few of his faves, and EVERYONE who contributes at least one of their own
favorite SQL Snaps to the show will receive access to a FREE text/zip file
containing ALL of the SQL Snaps on the Show! WOW - What a great way to build
your toolbox of SQL Snapshots!!!

Rumor
has it that another special guest may make a cameo appearance as well -
independent security consultant, published author, and now DB2 LUW Security
blogger Rebecca Bond has threatened to share SQL commands with viewers that will
help analyze DB2 Security! Have you discovered her new DB2 LUW security blog
yet? http://www.dbisoftware.com/blog/db2_security.php

ALSO
- are you following http://www.twitter.com/db2nightshow yet? YOU SHOULD BE! Set
your "follow" to enable mobile messages - The DB2Night Show is now starting to
give away Amazon.com gift certificates! Just be the first to directly and
correctly answer DB2 trivia, sample certification, or other DB2 related
questions, and you could win valuable prizes!

Visit http://www.DB2NightShow.com weekly for updates on upcoming
shows and recorded replays. Here is a look at future shows that are currently
being planned:

Congratulations on reading this far! Here is your reward! The first five
people to register for Episode #5 and who contribute a SQL Snapshot command will
receive a $25 Amazon.com gift certificate in appreciation for your contribution
to the Potluck Party.

The DB2Night Show Episode #2

We're going to talk about Index Design Best Practices for both DB2 LUW and
Oracle! So far we have one special guest lined up:
Curt Triplett is an
Independent Oracle Consultant specializing in Oracle performance
optimization (amongst many other things). We're going to look at Oracle
Index Best Practices and see how they compare to DB2. We're also working
on a special guest from the IBM Toronto Lab to spice up this lively
conversation.

Are you "Joe the DBA"? Do you have a performance challenge you'd like to
discuss? Contact The DB2Night Show per the instructions found at left.

We will be broadcasting at your favorite screen resolution. For audio,
VoIP and local country telephone numbers will be available for US, Canada,
European countries, Australia, and New Zealand. You are responsible for your
transportation to our "Studio", popping your own popcorn, and your favorite
beverage.

Save the date for the third episode:

The DB2Night Show Episode #3

HIGH Availability or CONTINUOUS Availability? Join us as we discuss and
debate HADR, HACMP, and Xkoto Gridscale. Ask questions of the experts.
And find out some configuration settings and best practices to sustain
high availability!